SO...my question to you brewing experts: is 140-180degF effluent sufficiently hot enough water to extract good quality espresso?

If yes, then I'll just call it a day and say that the CC1 display doesn't correlate well to what's actually going on in the PF enough to matter. If no, then maybe I have a machine problem. My crema looks good, shot tastes good, but like you guys am always looking for the best results (within my limited patience).

I don't think the data indicates that your brew temperature is that low. The only way to know for sure is to measure the water temperature at the shower screen. After the water has passed through the coffee, it doesn't matter what the water temperature is. The portafilter housing is not heated and will draw the heat down quickly after the water hits it. Drawing 8 oz of water out of the boiler is not a good test either. In the real world, you would never draw that much for one shot.

The aluminum foil crinkled up has little aluminum mass as it contains a lot of air space. It fills some with water. I leave the PF in the machine heated as with a brew. It seemed to give readings similar to my thermofilter. I am not the first to use aluminum foil, I read about it by searching enough. I actually used several test runs. The first run was a little different than the following because water stayed in the aluminum puck. Keeping it locked in and heated then gave fairly consistent runs. You are measuring at the screen, or on top of the puck. You want a fairly temperature neutral puck, perhaps close to the water temperature,as you want the temperature at the top without the puck acting as a heat sink. That method also included controlling the flow rate.

Not sure that it has as much flaw as about a 1/2 boiler exchange in a "shot."

It did seem to be similar to the HDPE thermofilter.

In your second test, was the thermofilter locked in long enough to equilibrate so that it did not heat sink the initial part of the test? If the PF is not in, then the screen or head without the screen is at a cold air interface and may be heating up as the water starts. Even with the PF locked in, it drops temperature to about 190F, from about 201F during the run, on my Gaggia. I can leave the PF locked in from start of the test until I am done, through several runs.

When I see temperatures far lower that the boiler should be, then I begin to wonder about each step of the test. I also took a boiler temperature to make sure that the PID temperature was accurate.

My apology if this seems adverse. I am trying to understand whether the results are from the method or machine. Perhaps I should not comment further unless you have questions of me.

hot enough at the screen? no, not for me. But they way you're measuring below the coffee is fairly meaningless. Also, subsequent pulls are bound to be hotter, your diffuser block, screen, and even PF are warming up.

If you really want to get into this, buy or rent a scace unit that measures within a pressurized coffee filled basket, but still there is the dynamic of flowing water.

If you just want good coffee, do a flush (warming the unit up for xx hours does nothing to warm what a flush will do) for 2-4 seconds before your pour, also you can change the offset, so 202 is really 208 if your current P9 setting is 0. I set mine to -6. I also flush for a few seconds, especially if my kitchen (ambient) is cold, like 65 deg F. Also, I like quicker than stock return to brew temps, so my P6 accelerates that, at the expense of overshoot (on the display, probably not in reality).

eeeehaw Said:

SO...my question to you brewing experts: is 140-180degF effluent sufficiently hot enough water to extract good quality espresso?

If yes, then I'll just call it a day and say that the CC1 display doesn't correlate well to what's actually going on in the PF enough to matter. If no, then maybe I have a machine problem. My crema looks good, shot tastes good, but like you guys am always looking for the best results (within my limited patience).

I always do a flush of the PF before loading & tamping, to preheat it.

Remember, my primary objective here is to investigate why my water temp is *dropping so much* during the pour...I'm much less concerned at the moment of the ideal water temp at the puck. I'm concerned because not only because a 50+degF drop in temp during the shot pull *seems* unusual to me, but also because there have been a couple CC1 posters here who don't see that drop, instead they see a drop along the lines of 10-20degF with their machines. This indicates a fault in my machine, which is what I'm trying to confirm or not.

Not that I'm not interested in having the water temp at the puck to be ideal...it's just that it isn't quite as important as resolving the temp drop question. Just trying to resolve one issue at a time in priority. Another way of saying it is that it won't be very productive of my time to measure temp at the screen with PF/puck in (inc all the time it takes to rig up for such a measurement) IF the temp drop that I'm already witnessing at both the machine's display and my effluent measurement indicates a possibly broken machine to begin with. Hope that makes sense.

I'm intrigued about the P6 & P9 settings. Unfortunately (for me anyway), there is NO description of the P6-P9 settings in the Crossland user manual (what each does, range, factory defaults, tips, etc), and I'm not versed in those PID variables as I'm sure others here are. I'd like to hear or read more about them, and it sounds like you now about them, ampguy? I'm all ears :-)

Are you saying the ~50 deg drop is without PF and 8 oz still, no PF? If so, I'm easily dropping that much, both on the readout (going from 202 to ---) when draining much of the boiler into a cup, probably more than ~50 if there is a breeze in the cool kitchen. So I think your machine is probably fine.

eeeehaw Said:

I always do a flush of the PF before loading & tamping, to preheat it.

Remember, my primary objective here is to investigate why my water temp is *dropping so much* during the pour...I'm much less concerned at the moment of the ideal water temp at the puck. I'm concerned because not only because a 50+degF drop in temp during the shot pull *seems* unusual to me, but also because there have been a couple CC1 posters here who don't see that drop, instead they see a drop along the lines of 10-20degF with their machines. This indicates a fault in my machine, which is what I'm trying to confirm or not.

Not that I'm not interested in having the water temp at the puck to be ideal...it's just that it isn't quite as important as resolving the temp drop question. Just trying to resolve one issue at a time in priority. Another way of saying it is that it won't be very productive of my time to measure temp at the screen with PF/puck in (inc all the time it takes to rig up for such a measurement) IF the temp drop that I'm already witnessing at both the machine's display and my effluent measurement indicates a possibly broken machine to begin with. Hope that makes sense.

I'm intrigued about the P6 & P9 settings. Unfortunately (for me anyway), there is NO description of the P6-P9 settings in the Crossland user manual (what each does, range, factory defaults, tips, etc), and I'm not versed in those PID variables as I'm sure others here are. I'd like to hear or read more about them, and it sounds like you now about them, ampguy? I'm all ears :-)

Ampguy: No (look at my OP), the 50degF temp drop is during a normal shot pull, with coffee in PF, as reported in the machine display. Much of the time, the drop is enough to bring the display down to the three dashes (---), which is 150degF or below. And that's with exactly 2 oz espresso volume. Machine still fine, even tho others only see a drop down to 180 or 190?

Have you tried any other grinders? I'm not familiar with the one you use. How is the taste of the espresso? What if you up it to 204 or 205?

eeeehaw Said:

Ampguy: No (look at my OP), the 50degF temp drop is during a normal shot pull, with coffee in PF, as reported in the machine display. Much of the time, the drop is enough to bring the display down to the three dashes (---), which is 150degF or below. And that's with exactly 2 oz espresso volume. Machine still fine, even tho others only see a drop down to 180 or 190?

If you want to check to see if your machine is operating properly here is what I would suggest.

NOTE: It is important that you have a good thermal response measuring system. A system that has a 2 second response time is about as large as you can go and still get fairly accurate results. The response time of the meter is about 10-1000 times faster than the probes so the probe is your limiting factor. If you are wondering what your system response time is, I suggest a simple test. Leave your probe at room temperature. Then prepare some boiling water. Insert the probe into the boiling water and count the time it takes to get close to boiling. This will give you a pretty good estimate of your response time.

Remove the shower screen screw and remove the screen.

Shove the probe up into the hole where the screw was.

Dispense 2-3 ounces of water. (Watch out for hot water on the skin)

Watch the temp on the measurement system

Check the screen of the machine to see what the temp is.

I did have one customer that packed the coffee so tightly that not much water was coming through the coffee but a lot of water went through the OPV and caused a significant temp drop.

Just a side note: PID is only software and is not a physical object. PID in this case is a control theory (algorithm) used in an electronic temperature controller to help the controller determine how much power to deliver to the water to maintain a set point temperature.

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